The Behance Blog
Bruce Springsteen, Woody Allen, and the Long Tradition of Hating Your Own Work
Louis P. Masur, author of Runaway Dream, recounts Springsteen’s soul-searching in an excellent Slate article:
He almost didn't release it. But Jon Landau, who had stepped in as a producer, helped persuade him to let go. According to writer Dave Marsh, Landau called Springsteen and said, "Look, you're not supposed to like it. You think Chuck Berry sits around listening to 'Maybelline'? And when he does hear it, don't you think he wishes a few things could be [changed]? Now c'mon, it's time to put the record out." The album appeared in 1975, and it launched Springsteen toward mega-stardom, getting him on the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously. Reviewing the album in Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus proclaimed, "It is a magnificent album that pays off on every bet ever placed on him—a '57 Chevy running on melted down Crystals records that shuts down every claim that has been made. And it should crack his future wide open."
Since then, Springsteen has gone on to win 20 Grammy Awards. Looking back from today’s perspective, it seems shocking that The Boss would have ever battled such self-doubt.
We hear a lot of stories about artists and innovators who persevered against all odds to have their work see the light of day: mega-author J.K. Rowlings’ pile of rejection letters, Thomas Edison’s gajillion attempts to invent a light bulb, Michael Jordan being deemed too short to play on his varsity basketball team. We view persistence — and grit! — as the key to success. Yet, after a certain point, persistence has a negative outcome: tunnel vision. You’ve been in it to win it for so long, you no longer know what winning means.
Let’s take Woody Allen as another example. When Allen completed Manhattan in 1979, he was extremely dissatisfied. He recounts his thoughts at the time in Robert B. Weide’s fascinating 2011 documentary:
Fortunately for the rest of us, Allen did not succeed in suppressing the film. Manhattan was released to significant critical acclaim, earned two Oscar nominations, and became his second biggest box office hit of all time. More than 40 films later, Manhattan is still regarded by many as Allen's best film, and has become one of the most iconic pictures ever made about New York City.
Of course, for Allen, failure is just another part of life and an inherent part of the creative process. As he says in the documentary, “I get more pleasure out of failing in a project that I am enthused over than in succeeding in a project that I know I can do well.”
As with Manhattan and Born to Run, it seems impossible to imagine a world where Franz Kafka’s novels — The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika — aren’t part of our cultural heritage. And yet, these works, too, were almost suppressed by their author. As Elif Batuman writes in an exhaustive New York Times article on the posthumous trajectory of Kafka’s works:
Fortunately, Max Brod had told Kafka that he would never do such a thing when the author had made his wishes known before his death. And rather than burning Kafka’s novels, Brod instead set out immediately to have them published. (Which resulted in its own rather Kafkaesque process for Brod, which you can read about here.)
Without Brod’s work, we wouldn’t likely have the word “Kafkaesque.” Similarly, without Alfred Russel Wallace, we might not have the word “Darwinian.” Because Charles Darwin, in a way, is part of this infamous group, too.
Darwin started exploring the theory of natural selection almost 20 years before he published On the Origin of Species in 1859. As an NPR story explains:
In June of 1858, Darwin had yet to publish anything when he received a letter from a fellow biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, in which Wallace shared an essay articulating his own theory of “natural selection” (although he didn’t use that term). While the history isn’t entirely clear on what Darwin’s motivations were, it seems likely that he was spurred to finally publish On the Origin of Species, which he did the following year, by Wallace — lest 20 years of work go unrecognized.
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So what’s the lesson in all this? On a practical level, it may be that we all need a third party — a friend or a producer who’s truly in our corner — to keep us accountable, and make us publish, when we’ve persisted so long that we don’t have any energy left to cheerlead ourselves across the finish line. On an existential level, it may be that the difference, and the distance, between the idea and the execution is always just a little bit greater than we expect. As author Michael Cunningham has written, “The art we produce lives in queasy balance with the art we can imagine.”
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How about you?
Do you have perfectionist tendencies that are holding you back?
More about Jocelyn K. Glei
A writer and the founding editor of 99U, Jocelyn K. Glei is obsessed with how to make great creative work in the Age of Distraction. Her latest book is Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distraction, and Get Real Work Done. Her previous works include the 99U’s own bestselling book series: Manage Your Day-to-Day, Maximize Your Potential, and Make Your Mark. Follow her @jkglei.